Fast JPEG Encoder Core from CAST Used in Fastec TS3 High-Speed Camera

Woodcliff Lake, NJ, March 6, 2012 — Fastec Imaging Corporation has incorporated a JPEG Encoder IP Core from CAST, Inc. in its groundbreaking TS3™ line of handheld, high-speed digital cameras.

Sourced from long-time CAST partner Alma Technologies SA, the JPEG-E Encoder Core is one of the fastest-available baseline JPEG compression cores. This enables extremely competitive functionality for Fastec’s TS3 high-speed digital cameras, including capture of 1280 x 1024 pixel images at 500 frames per second, or 800 x 600 at 1,250 fps.

"The quality of the core plus CAST's determination to see us succeed were both instrumental in bringing our groundbreaking handheld high-speed camera, the TS3, to market on time and on spec.,” said Bob Sefton, principal FPGA design engineer at Fastec. “The JPEG encoder's features and excellent performance were as specified, and the system integration was so easy I didn't need CAST's technical support services.”

The encoder core supports the Baseline Sequential DCT mode of the JPEG standard and is suitable for still-image or motion-JPEG capture. This third-generation core offers very fast JPEG compression—up to 750 MSamples/sec in a 65nm technology—yet is compact enough to fit low-cost FPGA devices. A bit-rate control option further benefits bandwidth-limited applications.

“We envisioned demanding customer applications like Fastec’s when designing the JPEG encoder,” said Spyros Theoharis, vice president of products and technology at Alma Technologies. “It’s exciting to see yet another customer release of such a remarkable product using our technology and CAST’s support.”

The JPEG-E core is part of a comprehensive family of image and video IP cores offered by CAST. Learn more by calling +1 201.391.8300 or visiting www.cast-inc.com.